Tag Archives: recipe

It was also the day my father was born, which made a certain amount of sense when I was little – why wouldn’t fathers be born on Father’s Day? (My mother was christened that same day in Italy, which is the start of the connections between the two of them…..)

And he LOVED Chinese food.

Like blue eyes and curly hair (what was left of it) this was such a fundamental part of who he was and what he did, that I never asked, nor do I remember anyone else ever once asking,

“Chinese food? What is about Chinese food, Bill? Why Chinese food? How does an Irish boy learn about Chinese food”

Good questions…wish I’d thought of them sooner. Not only was Chinese food the treat of treats, it brought him into the kitchen after he retired.

He had a wok.

Serious Wok action. This was the attitude, if not the reality of the ancestral home cooktop.

For a very long time, perhaps as far back as the ’70’s, a paperback copy of “The Pleasures of Chinese Cooking” by Madame Grace Zia Chu has been kicking around .

Several recipes have markers….but the basic of the basics is Fried Rice.

HAM FRIED RICE

2 Tablespoon soy sauce

½ teaspoon sugar

2 eggs

4 tablespoons peanut or corn oil, divided

¼ cup scallions cut into ¼ inch pieces

4 cups cold boiled rice

½ cup diced cooked ham

Mix the soy sauce with the sugar. Set aside.

Beat the eggs and scramble them slightly in 1 Tablespoon of the oil. Set aside.

In a heavy frying pan or a wok heat 3 tablespoons of oil over high heat.

Add scallions and stir a few times

Add rice and stir quickly so that rice won’t stick to the pan and will be well coated with the oil

Add the soy sauce/sugar mix, stir well.

Add the ham and the slightly scrambled egg, mixing and breaking the eggs into little pieces in the rice.

Serve hot.

NOTES: The rice needs to be THOROUGHLY cold or all you’ll get is a sticky mess. Madame Chu’s note and my experience. Brown rice may be used for a more hippie version, just be sure that the rice is cooked thoroughly.

Cooked chicken or beef may be substituted for the ham.

The original recipe does not call for a wok, but I think they’re a little more common now, so if you got one, go ahead and use it.

The original calls for ¼ teaspoon MSG, which I stopped using years, make that decades, ago. If that departure from the recipe makes it Irish/Chinese fusion, so be it. Call the Food Police. Guilty as charged.

I was thinking about shortbread, a cookie I used to make, and then having made it for two years, it HAD to be made because we

ALWAYS

had it. Until it didn’t get made for a year or two, because new cookies joined the fray….I mean

TRAY

According to Wikipedia, this is an American Christmas Cookie Tray.

I found a shortbread recipe….or four….or six…..some have splatters and some do not….from the many shortbread years. This will not be a shortbread year. Maybe next year.

I also found a recipe from my cousin Flora. She e-mailed it in 2006. This is her version, with some notes from me. I re-wrote the recipe in 2008, so I had made it several times by then. An easy add to the Holiday Tray.

RICOTTA COOKIES

Blend until creamy:

1 stick ROOM TEMPERATURE butter

1/4 cup ricotta (I actually put in about 1/3 cup)

Add and mix well

1 cup sugar

1 egg

Slowly stir in:

2 cups SIFTED flour (this is less than 2 cups flour sifted)

1/2 tsp baking soda (note from me – baking soda and baking powder are not the same thing, and aren’t really interchangeable. Don’t ask me how I know this, but I do, I REALLY do!)

1/2 tsp salt (note from me – don’t leave out the salt – it activate the soda to leaven)

Drop batter from a tsp onto a greased baking sheet. (I use RELEASE which I think is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I TOTALLY agree!)

Bake in the upper half of oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Tops will be white but bottoms will be brown. Makes 36 cookies. Cool and glaze. Store in a covered container and they will last for a couple of weeks (you won’t get to this point because they will be eaten like grapes).

Glaze: 2 cups sifted confectionery sugar

3 tbls orange juice or whatever flavoring you choose

sprinkles if you have them

Blend well (NOTE: the sprinkles go one the cookies after they have been glazed – don’t add the sprinkles to the glaze)

Bon Appetito!

Still Life with Grapes and Other Fruits by Luca Forte, Getty Center, 1630s

“eaten like grapes”

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What makes comfort food COMFORTING is that it’s big, and fast and easy and pulls no punches. And possibly takes you back to childhood, even one that wasn’t quite yours….so when someone from Minnesota mentioned missing Tator Tot Hotdish…..we were skeptics, but the Tater Tots….the tater tots…..so when she brought it in to share (this is a sharing dish), she had to write up the recipe.

Whatever else they’ve been called, they’re all still cranberries. In 1672 John Josslyn suggests:

“Some make Tarts with them as with Goose Berries.”

Gooseberries

Red Gooseberries

Cranberry Tart – Precedence and Persistence

“Tartes of Gooseberries.

Lay your gooseberries in your crust, and put to them cinnamon and ginger,

sugar and a few small raisins put among them and cover them with a

cover.”

– A Booke of Cookery with the Serving of the Table; A.W.; 1591;

page 28

Berries, cinnamon, ginger, sugar and small raisins between pastry. Bake is implied. Easy.

And somewhat familiar…..

CRANBERRY – RAISIN PIE

3 C raw cranberries

1 C raisins

1 ¼ C sugar

2 Tbsp. flour

¼ tsp salt

¾ C water

1 ½ tsp vanilla*

Pastry for a 2 crust 9 inch

Put the cranberries and raisins through food grinder.Place in saucepan and add all ingredients except vanilla.Cook over low heat until thick, and cranberries are cooked. Add vanilla and place in pie shell. Bake until crust is done. Dots of butter and nutmeats may be added on

– Florence H. Angley. A Book of Favorite Recipes. complied by the Ladies Solidarity of St. Joseph the Worker Church Hanson, Mass..1968. p. 52.

Place potatoes in a large pot and cover with salted water; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until potatoes are tender and split open, about 20 minutes. Drain and return potatoes to pot.

Mash potatoes with butter, nutmeg, and salt using a potato masher until well incorporated; stir in sour cream and whip until mashed potatoes are creamy.

But one thing Babs said really caught everyone’s attention: she said in one of her first visits to Boston, she went to Durgin-Park and ate Indian Pudding. But then just recently, she said, when she asked about Durgin-Park, she was told it was closed!

We’re not sure who Babs was talking to, but clearly they provided her with wrong information. Durgin-Park is still open for business, and after Streisand’s concert, the restaurant was deluged with phone calls the next morning.

“Were not closed, we’re still open,” said Petya Petkova, one of Durgin-Park’s managers.